


Visiting Hours

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Life
Genre: Fruit, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:18:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Nobody ever visited him who wasn't paid to, when he was in actual prison. So that part's an improvement.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visiting Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roga/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Часы посещения](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11575656) by [fandom_Police_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_Police_2017/pseuds/fandom_Police_2017)



> Disclaimer: Charlie Crews might say that we all, as humans and parts of the universe, belong to each other, and create and are created by each other. But legally speaking, you know, he's not mine.
> 
> Thanks to Mia and Iulia for beta!
> 
> This story was first posted on February 2, 2009.

During the times when he's aware enough to work on it, Charlie is compiling a list of ways in which near-death prison is unlike actual prison. Creepy dead guys never talked to him in actual prison, and it is possibly the first time it's ever occurred to him that his time there could have been _worse_.

Nobody ever visited him who wasn't paid to, when he was in actual prison. So that part's an improvement.

* * *

Rachel smells like Jen. Not Jen as he remembered her before, the Jen he dreamed of seeing this way, just once, sitting at the desks facing each other with the thick glass between, the Jen he thought might find it in her heart to believe in him. Rachel smells like Jen now, the one he slept with and then let go of, the one he runs into sometimes in public, out in the world. She smells like she's used Jen's shampoo.

Charlie doesn't know how he can smell a damn thing; the glass is three inches thick.

Rachel isn't crying, but she keeps her head down as she talks into the phone, and her voice sounds strange.

"I had to come back, Charlie. I told you not to get killed."

Come back. From--

"I sent you to Paris," Charlie says. "What girl doesn't want to go to Paris? What girl comes back from Paris to sit in a--in _here_?"

But Rachel doesn't hear him, doesn't look up. Charlie reaches for the phone, but there isn't one on his side. "Rachel!"

Rachel is still talking, but her voice is dwindling. All Charlie can think of is that she's _here_ and it isn't _safe_. He can't protect her from the inside.

He starts banging on the glass, then clawing at the edges, fingernails catching on the screws that hold the glass. "Rachel! Rachel, it's not safe, you have to _leave_! Get out of here, don't worry about me, it doesn't matter what happens to me--"

"...Brian and Dani, so I guess I gotta go."

Rachel hangs up the phone and stands, and while Charlie bangs and shoves and pulls and cuts up his hands just trying to get through to her, she looks straight at him and doesn't see a thing. She touches the glass delicately as he hammers at the other side, screaming her name, and then she turns and walks away.

* * *

Constance's sad smile hasn't changed a bit, but she still has her new haircut, so Charlie guesses this is happening now, and not then. Plus, he's pretty sure he never talked to her anywhere but the little interview room, in actual prison. He isn't even shackled now. The glass makes it pretty much a moot point.

There is still no phone on his side.

"Your dad put me on the family list so I could visit you," Constance says, and then the lights dim and Charlie winces as she looks off to one side of him.

"God, Charlie--I know you're not happy with him, but--" the lights get dimmer, and static intrudes over Constance's voice. "Charlie. Charlie, it's just me. It's Constance. Hey, it's just me."

Charlie blinks, and the lights are back up, Constance's voice coming through clearly again. Her hand is pressed flat to the glass.

"He told me," Constance says, holding Charlie's gaze with that don't-you-fuck-around-this-is-your-life look she gave him so often over mountains of paperwork. "He told me the nurses said that patients' vital signs often get better when someone they love visits. He told me yours kept getting worse when he tried to sit with you--Charlie, you _flatlined_."

Charlie looks away, down at his hands. They're clenched into fists, nails digging into his palms, tendons standing out. He can't even feel them. He can't make them relax.

"Charlie," Constance says softly. "You are going to have to find some Zen for Daddy, or you are going to die trying to get the last word. Don't do that to yourself, all right? It's up to you now. Don't tell me we only got you a year's reprieve."

"Eighteen months three days," Charlie corrects her, because days of freedom are nothing to round down.

But her smile is still sad, and she takes her hand away and goes.

* * *

Dani's sitting on the visitor's desk, shoulder and hip and knee all pressed right up to the glass. There's a citrus-sweet smell that doesn't belong to her (not that he's been going around sniffing his partner, but being in the moment when you're working alongside someone day in and day out means developing a certain awareness of all sorts of physical details).

She's looking down at her hands even as she pushes close, and she says, "I didn't have time to do two things at lunch today, so if Tidwell asks, this is a meeting, okay? You're here, I'm here, two Friends of Bill, it's a meeting."

Dani's shoulder moves like she's doing something with her hands, and the citrus smell sharpens. Charlie gets up and sits on the edge of the prisoner's desk, but he still can't see what she's doing, and Dani still doesn't look up.

"I've been sober five days and I can't remember when I've wanted to crawl into a bottle more," Dani says quietly, her voice steady. She is speaking precisely. She has considered the other times she has wanted to drink and cannot find a contender. "I want a drink like I want my next breath."

She looks away completely, her shoulder turning from the glass, and Charlie irresistibly follows. He trusts his weight to the desk and pushes up against the cold barrier of the glass, listening with his whole body.

"But it turns out I've got this partner," Dani says. "And this partner's got all this shit going down that he needs me to take care of. And it turns out I'd rather die one breath at a time than let him down."

Charlie feels like he can't breathe. He feels--he feels warmth, seeping through the glass, where Dani's hip is aligned with his.

"So there, that's my stand-and-deliver for the day."

Dani looks around, her gaze passing right through him even as her warmth melts through the glass. "This place looks like a produce stand, Crews. Everybody's sending you fruit baskets. I don't even know what this one is."

She's got a piece of fruit in her hands, Charlie realizes, and she's been tearing the rind off and splitting it into sections. He watches her ease a piece of the red fruit into her mouth--cautiously, as if it might explode. He watches the faintest surprise register on her face when she discovers she likes it.

He smiles a little, and whispers, "Pomelo."

Dani's eyes go wide, and Charlie recognizes that the light is coming in through a window, not only from the fluorescents overhead. He can still feel the warmth from where she's sitting with her hip flush to his, perched on the edge of his bed.

"Also known as the Chinese grapefruit," he adds, though the words rasp in his throat. "Native to Southeast Asia, the largest citrus fruit--"

Dani's disbelief settles into familiar exasperation, and she says, "I should have known you would come back to tell me fruit facts."

Charlie tries to shrug, and then decides against it. Dani holds out a section of fruit, and Charlie opens his mouth entreatingly. She rolls her eyes, but sets it on his tongue, and Charlie lets his teeth break the surface, the juice stinging but perfect going down his dry throat.

Dani looks down again, and says, "Did you wake up just when I asked you that?"

Charlie winces, chews, swallows. Dani is edging away, now that there's no glass to separate them.

"Yeah," Charlie says. "You asked, I had to answer."

Dani looks back at that, searching him for something, but then she stands up--sets the pomelo down--and turns and walks away.

She only goes as far as the door, though, and Charlie lets his eyes close as he hears her call out, "Hey, my partner's awake, you wanna get a doctor in here?"


End file.
